Books published by publisher Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc.

"Domingo" the burro the Hollisters were given for a pet the last time they were out West is the innocent means by which the Hollisters once again find themselves following the mystery trail on horseback. Because of a near accident the Hollister children meet and befriend the Blairs who are from Nevada. They learn that Mr. Blair is trying to sell some of his property on the Tumbling K Ranch, but strange and eerie events have discouraged prospective buyers. Naturally, the minute the Hollisters hear mystery is involved they are eager to be in the thick of it. Their interest is further aroused when a prowler is discovered spying on them in Shoreham. What excitement there is then, when they are invited to visit the Blairs and help them solve this baffling problem. Who is the strange and evil looking man who tries to cause the trouble for the Hollisters on their trip to Nevada? And who is the tall lanky cowboy, Dakota Dawson, whose actions are so suspicious? And are the strange lights seen on the mountain man-made or some odd trick of nature? The Happy Hollisters find fun, adventure, danger and the answer to the many questions posed by the mystery surrounding the Tumbling K Ranch.

This book has a bone to pick with you -- a funny bone. It is the story of a sergeant by a sergeant, all about said sergeant's adventures on the damnedest front of the war -- the home front! In case you didn't know, "Feather Merchants" is G.I. slang for civilians. Shulman, America's bright new apostle of zany, used to be a feather merchant himself, which makes him the perfect author for this roaring, good-natured travesty. It shouldn't happen to us civilians, but it has, and you had better read it "on account of the duration" as one of Shulman's characters describes the fix we're in. Behold the tale: As he leaves the peace and security of the air base, Sgt. Dan Miller is just a happy soldier going home on furlough. But he is ambushed by an advance patrol of feather merchants as he gets off the train in Minneapolis. They drive him home on black-market gas, gorge him on hoarded food, sir him down at a suspiciously new deluxe radio to hear the omniscient A. K. Hockfleisch's war-news broadcast. But the block-buster that completely shatters his illusions about the privations of his people comes from the most desirable feather merchant of them all, lovely Estherlee McCracken. She says that Sgt. Dan is a desk soldier and the hell with him. Buy bonds. Stung by his girl's rebuff, bewildered by the abundance of transportation and victuals in a world of (supposedly) no gas, no tires, no butter, and no steaks, Dan goes to the Sty to drown his sorrows in the watered whiskey and fabulous floor show offered in that charming establishment. But it is his undoing, for there he gets himself rumored into the role of a hero -- with explosive results. THE FEATHER MERCHANTS is the first book about civilians by a soldier, and maybe we had it coming to us. Only Shulman could have written it, only those with a wide-open sense of humor ought to read it, and only William Crawford could have drawn...

Amazon.com Review: One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore: Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest. From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'" In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels the Grand Trunk Road. --Alix Wilber